Local JOKE-alism at work: Miami Herald endorses Republican who *squints* believes she was abducted by extraterrestrials

After just getting lectured by hundreds of newspapers on the importance of local journalism, why in the world would the Miami Herald go and ruin that and endorse someone for office who says she was abducted by extraterrestrials?

And this isn’t just some local race, mind you. It’s to replace Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in Congress in a district that the Cook Political Report has as “Lean Democratic“:

As this is an endorsement for the Republican primary, it looks more than fishy that the paper would endorse this candidate. Dems have formidable candidates running on their side, any one of which sounds better than someone who “when she was 7, she was taken aboard a spaceship and, throughout her life, she has communicated telepathically with the beings.” Imagine the debate between Ms. ET Phone Home and Donna Shalala?

A wealth of candidates, bringing new names, unexpected faces and diverse talents, signed up to be the Democrat who would replace Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in Congress. When Donna Shalala, former University of Miami president, joined in, bearing a healthy war chest, a well-known name and a CV of singular accomplishments, the field thinned somewhat.

Still, with Shalala’s presence, the wealth of talent in this race only got more abundant.

Matt Haggman, who spent 10 years as Miami Herald reporter and most recently was program director for the Knight Foundation. He’s is rightly credited with nurturing Greater Miami’s transformation into a technology hub. Michael Hepburn, a former academic adviser at UM’s School of Business; Rep. David Richardson, who has served in the Florida House since 2012 and has taken on Florida’s broken prison system; and Kristen Rosen Gonzalez, a Miami Beach Commissioner since 2015. She proposes, among other things, a bullet tax, whose proceeds would go to retrofit schools to protect students from mass shootings.

The Herald ended up endorsing Richardson for the Dems because of his work on prison reform:

“Richardson took on the task of reforming Florida’s broken prison system. It wasn’t glamorous, there was little publicity, but it was the right thing to do…he is a true public servant who will make the most of a seat in Congress.”#FL27#BlueWave2018https://t.co/ThztDVwU8w